The Spaces for Silence

It was as if we stumbled
back through a doorway into the past,
the wine bottle next to the bed,
our feet

and hands and head resting, finally.
The music playing next to us,
and you said,

We’ve been listening to this woman sing
for 13 years.
and I said, Yes. What a good small thing
I thought, to lie here, still, after all those years,

our heads against our pillows,
our elbows just occasionally touching,
as if to keep us tethered to the this moment in time
to each other.

Outside the snow might have fallen
or it might have not. We were incapable of leaving this
bed, our raft, our little pink heart, floating out to sea.

“Don said everything changes. He said it was the one thing you always knew,” you said.
You are remembering something that hasn’t happened yet,
replaying it in your mind.
In that second you can feel yourself changing, your bones chipping, your hair lengthening.

“Don’s right,” I said.
And then we don’t speak, the woman still sings
and we still believe in the integrity of words spoken but also
the spaces for silence.